


On Wings of Stone

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [21]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Golden Deer Route, standard-issue epistolary tomfoolery, time gap and postwar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:48:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28139442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Ashe sends Marianne a weird shaped rock. It would be rude to not reply.Written for the Felannie discord drabble challenge; this week's prompt was "Gifts."
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Marianne von Edmund
Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649380
Comments: 16
Kudos: 41
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	On Wings of Stone

The first present that Ashe sent Marianne was a rock, which she found confusing.

The rock, however, was accompanied by a long, chatty letter about his life since leaving Garreg Mach, how he hoped she was doing well, how he was spending his days looking after his siblings and following news of the war. It was only in the last paragraph that he explained the rock.

_I found this on a walk with my siblings, and we all agree it’s shaped like a bird_ , he wrote. _I thought of you immediately. Hope it arrives safe!_

Marianne stared at the rock, misshapen and angular, turning it every direction until she could make out a beak and wings with a healthy dose of imagination. She wondered why Ashe had bothered writing so much to her; she had never been a particularly interesting person to talk to.

Still, it was rude not to reply, so Marianne wrote a long letter back, asking about his family, hoping he was staying safe in the war, and describing the more exciting birds she had come across that month. She did not speak of Edmund, or her family, or herself. She still didn’t think she was very interesting.

When she was done, she had a letter twice as long as anyone would want to read, so she included some bird seed, so he could help his brother and sister feed some real birds on their next walk. To make up for such a boring letter, she told herself.

She didn’t expect to hear from him again – even as a transfer into the Golden Deer, Ashe was a ridiculously popular student, and probably had many, many friends he needed to send rocks to. But a few months later, another letter arrived, longer than the first. It was accompanied by a folded up parchment that contained a child’s drawing.

_I must inform you, you have awakened a nascent love of bird-watching within my sister,_ Ashe wrote in cheerful, looping script. _She insisted I send along this photo she drew of us. I’m sorry if my descriptions did you a disservice._

Marianne looked at the picture. Ashe was clearly identifiable and towered over the other three figures. Two smaller figures with matching silver hair stood on one side of him. On the other was a figure with bright blue hair and a giant looping smile, which Marianne realized had to be herself. They were all surrounded by oversized birds; one rested on Marianne’s arm, which was completely perpendicular to the rest of her body.

Marianne hung the drawing above her bedside table, by the rock shaped like a bird, where she smiled at herself every night before bed. 

Marianne was not an artist herself, and knew no adorable children to impress into service on her behalf, so a handful of letters were exchanged before she was able to determine an appropriate present to send back to Ashe – or rather, she supposed, to his sister. She found it in her family’s library – a small volume of stories about a famous knight that she had loved as a child and that she took great pleasure in rereading before wrapping it up to send along with her next letter. If she pictured the knight as silver-haired and replaced his lance with a bow, and if the clever, resourceful maiden he rescued at the end of the tale had pale blue braids instead of golden curls in Marianne’s mind, she made no mention of it in the letter she sent along with the book.

It went on this way for years, the occasional drawing or feather or pressed flower accompanying long letters about nothing and everything, unless Marianne’s bedside table was littered with what seemed like half the forest from western Fódlan. The gifts were small and insignificant and meant everything to Marianne for how much they connected her to Ashe’s daily existence, to the woods in his town and the birds outside his window and the garden he must have kept that she secretly longed to ask about and more secretly longed to see. It was mundane and ordinary and she treasured it.

So, even more than the rock, it was a bit of a shock when Ashe sent her the necklace.

It sparkled in the light when Marianne held it up, and she was sure there must have been some mistake. She tore open the rest of the letter and read, bewildered and anxious.

_The Millennium Festival is in three months away, and I can’t help but remember that promise we all made to each other so many years ago_ , Ashe wrote. _So much has changed since then. There is so little we can depend on. I worry where we’ll end up in the next year, Marianne. I worry that I can no longer pretend my life is one of tending flowers and watching birds. I have people I must protect._

_I will not ask you where you’re going in three months – I know promises cannot always be kept. But in case the world changes so drastically, I wanted you to have this. I hope you’ll think of my family if you ever wear it. I hope you’ll think of me_.

The necklace had a bird charm in the center, wings afloat as if it were in flight. Marianne spoke to her father that day, announcing her decision to attend the reunion at Garreg Mach that winter.

It was a week after the reunion that Marianne realized he wasn’t coming.

“Ashe? The scrawny archer you had a crush on? I think he might’ve defected to the Empire,” Hilda said, popping another bite of fish tart into her mouth at the dining hall that evening. She looked around the table and bellowed, “Hey, does anyone know if that Ashe kid is showing up?”

“Last I head he was in Gaspard,” Leonie said. “I actually ran into him a couple of times, a couple years back. He did some mercenary work for the villages around there.”

“Enlisted with Count Rowe, from what I understand,” Claude said with a shrug. “Maybe he wants steadier work; he has a family to look out for.”

“Oh well that’s good!” Hilda said, turning back to Marianne, who had unfortunately not succeeded in sinking into the floor yet. “If he’s fighting for the Kingdom we’ll probably never even see him! You can send him a nice letter after we’ve claimed the Empire; I’m sure he’d love to hear from you after all these years.”

Marianne skipped evening prayers for the first time in years. She sat on her bed and carefully unpacked a box of insignificant things – the flowers, the drawings, the ribbons, the necklace. And turning over every item in her fingers felt more like a prayer than her prayers did, sometimes.

And perhaps the goddess agreed, because when Marianne picked up the rock that almost looked like a bird, she was struck with inspiration that may have been divine.

When she asked Claude for his help the next day, he raised his eyebrows in a way that was more knowing than Marianne particularly liked.

“What an interesting request,” he said. “I didn’t think you were the type to snoop. What are you looking for?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she told him firmly. She was braver now than she’d been at the academy. Claude seemed so pleased with this revelation that for once he did what she asked.

“You’ll have to let me know what you find,” he told her the next day, pushing the key into her hands. “And if there’s any way I can turn it to our army’s advantage.”

That night, Marianne wrote a final letter. She would send it to Ashe’s sister and hope that it got to him, someday.

_I apologize for not properly thanking you for the necklace_ , she wrote. _I will wear it every day until I see you again. Garreg Mach is worn down, but still the same place we once knew._

_You remember once I returned a key to you. It was, perhaps, the start of our little tradition of exchanging objects, a tradition I have come to cherish so dearly. Upon arriving back at Garreg Mach, I was shocked to discover you’d left it behind. I return it to you once more. The room it opens lies locked and empty. Indeed, the whole monastery seems empty without you._

_I know I am thoughtless to ask for one final gift, and I do not deserve such a request. If this key seems more of a burden than a gift, you can cast it into the sea, and I won’t begrudge you. But I find I can no longer rely on letters to thank you for your kindness over the years. Selfishly, I must tell you in person._

The evening after she sent the letter, Marianne carried the stone with her to the cathedral. As she prayed to the goddess she ran her fingers along its jagged and misshapen edges, and she found the courage to pray for things too secret and selfish to say aloud.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone else recruit Ashe in Verdant Wind and then spend the first week back at the post-TS monastery just running around in a panic because you couldn't find The Boy? It's absolutely shocking how badly this game wants you to kill Ashe in the time skip, as if I would ever do such a monstrous thing. Catch Marianne at Ailell hitting him repeatedly over the head with a healing staff and yelling softly at him until he agrees to defect again.
> 
> [ You can find me on twitter. ](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


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